1. Total quality management based program can lead an organization towards compe
ID: 426948 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Total quality management based program can lead an organization towards competitive performance. How? Why? How well is your organization, that you are a part of, is using quality to gain competitive advantage? What would you recommend?
2. TQM program uses several quantitative tools and measurements to ensure quality of the process. Evaluating processes and performances that uses system of quantitative rates, reports, annual reviews of attainments, etc. can cause forced quotes, classification and ratings that entail unhealthy competition, break of team collaboration within company. Provide your arguments that instead of such purely quantitative systems, managers should personally comment employees' work, advice and help to improve it.
Explanation / Answer
1. Total quality management (TQM) based program enhances the competitive performance of an organization by enabling it to focus on and increase its production performance as well as customer performance. TQM enables an organization to create price as well as value advantage over competitors as TQM allows for and makes room for differentiation. TQM leads a firm to control the quality of its products and services and this leads to continuous improvement. Besides continuous improvement TQM also leads the organization to meet the requirements of the customers, reduce the level and quantum of rework, increase long-range thinking and increase the involvement and teamwork among its employees.
The organization that I am a part of is an automobile manufacturer. The organization is using quality to gain competitive advantage by focusing on quality to gain competence. The organization now uses competitive benchmarking, team-based problem solving and constant measurement of its results as a part of its TQM initiative. All this has helped it to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.
My recommendation would be that the organization should only focus on improving quality to bolster its competence and should dilute its focus on the conventional focal points of success like market share, revenue, profits etc.
2. I fully agree that use of strict and watertight quantitative tools can lead to forced quotas. This can eventually become a negative force and can potentially derail the benefits of TQM in the long run. In order to avoid this manager should look at and focus on the qualitative aspects of TQM.
There are four important elements of TQM – supplier relations, benchmarking, quality measurement, and continuous process improvement. Managers should empower employees to work closely and cooperatively with suppliers. This will help in eliminating defects in the long run. Benchmarking should focus on best practices but without much quantitative emphasis. Rational benchmarks for cost, product reliability and other factors should be established. Focus should be more on quality measurement and continuous process improvement.
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